WAMU, my local NPR station, recently launched it’s own social network powered by Ning. Creatively called “The Conversation” (perhaps a shout-out to Joseph Jaffe), it’s touted as a way for listeners to add to the news coverage. It’s obviously also a way for WAMU to keep listeners engaged, not only promoting their programming, but also providing additional opportunities to give.

I commend WAMU for seeking feedback from their listeners. This is an important business function gained from social media, and it’s what consumers now expect. I am far more likely to contact them online, than by calling in to provide a comment. But I’m not sure that I would be an avid enough commenter/participant to want to sign up and join a community around this.

But I thought I would check it out, support my local NPR station, and maybe learn a thing or two as well.

Brendan Sweeney, a producer at WAMU, posted a question about rising food prices on May 15th. There are now 14 replies, including replies to replies by Sweeney. Some of the topics suggested are pretty interesting: Carlito, a non-WAMU employee brought up the idea of high fructose corn syrup being the basis of our cheap food in the US. Sweeney and colleague Kay discuss some interesting angles on high fructose corn syrup, and Jo Arpee chimes in with the full contact information for a nutrition expert at the University of Maryland.

This info raised my suspicions that Arpee might be a press officer at University of Maryland, but a quick Google search suggests she’s a nutritionist herself. Sweeney and Kay’s initial public discussion does spark further comments and gets members of the public involved.

It seems the original discussion originated out of an episode of the Kojo Nnamdi show that aired on April 10th.

Kojo Nnamdi Show: The Global Impact of Rising Food Prices – April 10, 2008

They followed it up with a show on June 2nd: Kojo Nnamdi Show: Local Effects of Rising Global Food Prices – June 2, 2008 So Sweeney’s original post makes a lot of sense.

If you take time to listen to the segment, you’ll see that the high fructose corn syrup is part of the lead to the story and part of the explanation of the economics of school lunch menus by Susan Levin. Really fascinating stuff. Another user comment on organics developed into a guest on the show who talks about developing a $60/week organic food budget.

From this one example, I’m happily surprised by the impact WAMU’s Conversation is having on its programming. I now plan to join The Conversation at wamu.org!

At first glance, Howard Kurtz’s column today in the Washington Post (Blogging Without Warning) gives a solid analysis of the impact of bloggers on the MSM. But by focusing on Mayhill Fowler – the blogger who broke both the Obama bitter comment and the Clinton scumbag one – Kurtz belies his position as a member of the MSM by consistently highlighting her lack of experience and training.

Kurtz’s descriptions downplay her efforts to cover the Democratic primaries, and seem to suggest she just got lucky – both times. Teferencing Fowler as “the woman” (something he does twice in the article), Kurtz writes:

“I have no journalistic training,” says the woman who spent the previous 15 years trying unsuccessfully to get several books and novels published. “I just discovered that I’m impelled to get out there and get the truth of the matter.” But that has required overcoming her natural reluctance to hurt her political side.

Fowler is part of a new breed — citizen journalist, liberal advocate, agent provocateur — and her success has stirred questions about her methods. Fowler freely admits she has donated to Obama’s campaign and started her blogging stint a year ago because she admired him.

Tying right back in with We the Media, Kurtz brings up a number of the issues forseen by Dan Gillmor as citizens have the same ability to publish as journalists. But really, how likely is it that the same bumbling “citizen journalist” would end up with the only recordings of two major players in the primaries as they make serious verbal flubs?

What I find most interesting about the Post article, is its end:

In an e-mail, Fowler says she has come to realize that her presence “flummoxes some longtime journalists — because suddenly here I am, unpaid but as a consequence with much more freedom to find out what’s going on out there, and writing for a new and encroaching media that is a Wild Wild West of lawlessness.” But she has also had to reexamine her own beliefs.

“Over time, I’ve become more like a traditional journalist,” Mayhill says. “I’m now much more skeptical and much more distanced.”

This idea is borne out by Mayhill’s most recent post on her blog (Running Behind the Bus), which explains what she’s been doing as a blogger for the Huffington Post for the past year. She is unique among bloggers in that she’s been following the candidates around from one campaign stop to the next. She also gets clearance to sit at the local press table, has daily deadlines for her editors at the HuffPost, and according to Kurtz’s column, gets fact-checked to some extent by those editors. While she is apparently paying her own way to follow the campaigns around, she otherwise sounds an awful lot like a press-pass carrying journalist.

This is an interesting development in citizen journalism, and one that wasn’t forseen by Gillmor.

Some other interesting coverage of Mayhill’s blog by the MSM and other bloggers include the NYTimes, LATimes, LATimes again, NewsBusters, DailyKos, and Gawker.